What It's Like to Walk in Faith

There was a Christian band that I listened to when I was much younger that was called Angelica, I believe.  They were a screaming guitar rock band, as many of the bands of that time where.  They had this one song that was called Walking in Faith.  So, being a young Christian I was like..... yeah... WALKING IN FAITH at the top of my lungs and believing that everything would be perfect in my life, like a Biblical providence story unfolding.  I really believed that was what the Scripture meant when it said to walk in faith.  You claimed your belief and waited for God to make it happen.  There are quite a few that still believe that is true, even though that is closer to spell casting than faith in God... or life for that matter.

The kind of understanding that I have come to have about faith is that it is hard, often lonely, filled with reasons to doubt, takes a long time, changes you, and often is answered in a way that you do not expect.  I have walked in faith many times, and I am doing so, again.  In those moments, you wonder a lot of things.. if it will happen, if you are stupid to try, if you are enough, and if you are doing the best that you can do, for example.  Faith isn't about having the answers and knowing things with clarity.  If it was, it wouldn't be faith.  Faith is not knowing all of these things and yet TRYING.. stepping up to the plate to take a swing and then swinging, making the move, beginning the fitness goal, making the plans and then executing your best, even on the difficult days.

But, you were not meant to do it alone.  I know it often feels like that is the case, but that is what faith in God REALLY is all about.  It isn't speaking some words to get what you want.  It is letting it break you down enough to tell God about it, who is standing there waiting for you to call and wanting to be there for you like every parent feels and wants for their kids.  Faith isn't getting your desires.  It is about desiring and walking in the direction of the goal, trying your best, forgiving your worst, and receiving God's grace and peace on the journey.

And, that is what I wish for you, tonight.  I hope you had a good weekend.  Let's walk in faith in the weeks to come. 

Noise

I wasn't going to post tonight, but I feel that it is important to share WHY it was important not to post, tonight.  I didn't want to post tonight, because I was not feeling that I had something to say.  I had not received any perspective and was not feeling any inspiration that was saying this was important to tell otheres.  So, as I generally do, I chaulk that up as a learing day or  a pause day to myself.

Now, on the other side of that, it has been long enough to post to promote the blog, and my stats.. which are already good enough... have begun to blog.  So, the pressure is to post something.. anything.. and hit on things people want to hear to promote.  But, anyone that knows me knows that that kind of pressure has an almost reverse effect upon me.  I have not ever and do not post content to please others.  I post what I feel led to post, and I don't feel led to post.  So, this will be tonight's post.  I am going to watch this baseball game I am watching, and I will listen to music, and I will think about my coming move and probably ovverthink different things and feel things that I want to consider without posting... which is the human right to anyone alive, today.  But, this will be the only post that I do.. a post to say... tonight is not for you.  And whether posted or not, expect other nights that are the same.

The New Begins Today

There has been a lot of lessons that I have learned and ways of personal growth that I have explored and am doing.  The posts of those lessons have been good to share, and I will note them in the future at times.  However, I have been feeling the desire from within and as a result of my development that my focus must change both in my own life and the large part of this blog.  I have spent a lot of time discussing the change andon the topic of what are good ways of thinking and things to be doing to help to move from paths that does not lead to long term happiness to foundational ones that do.  But, I don't want my own thinking or this blog to be stuck in the transition or change period, just as it is not good for you to be stuck there, either.

Therefore, I am going to be taking a focus in my life and my blog to actually be LIVING the new life and BEING the better me that I have been becoming.  I do realize that this blog post is talking about the change, but I desire the future ones to be posting about the good without need for context that brought it there or transformative life lessons.  At some point on the journey to happiness, you must allow yourself to just be happy.  It isn't something I have not been doing.  I have already been chooseing to focus on the positive and growth and hope.  But, especially as my date of my move to my new location is approaching, I want to focus on the good that is found in my day and what I like about myself and more.  

So, my social media will become more personal to me and my life joys and successes, and my lessons in this Forward to Happiness blog will have a lot more examples I share of being... happy.  My old posts will still be out there and I am continuing to work to get them indexed.  But, just as my playlists often lead to a good ending, I am going to move my life, daily, to reflect that for myself, as well.. not because I found someone with whom to share it all but because I found myself to experience it.  It's time that that began.

Being Reasonable

I was reading on social media this morning that 5 planets are in retrograde, and it occurred to me that my new way of thinking and planning by reason has influenced areas such as this, as well.  The post was saying that if you were feeling a little heavier than normal and more drawn to emotions, the retrograde was the cause.

I don't need planets moving to feel emotions, but I began removing control over my plans by my emotions a while ago.  I think it started when I was processing and realizing that allowing my emotions to take the wheel had led me to many difficulties and had cost me many things that were valuable to me.. again.. not just feelings of positive but negative reactions, as well.  So, I determined that the best thing I could do would be to use my very smart brain to plan my path and then stick to it, REGARDLESS of my feelings on any particular day.

It's not always an easy path.  I still feel the full range of emotions at different times.  I feel love and longing and fear and pain and more at different times, but as you make it a habit to feel the feelings, let them pass through you without a hand on your life wheel, and stay fixed on plans, it gets easier to do so as you go forward.  

So... emotional retrograde?  I didn't even notice.  I have enough things changing in my life, right now, to justify any emotional unsteadiness, but my path and plans are fixed and progressing; and knowing that gives me the peace of stability in the now and the future.

Act Don't React

There has been a lot of lessons that I have had as a focus over the last year, but one of them that has been important and different than much of my past is realizing that as you plan and guide your life, it should be chosen by logic and reason and not as much by emotion.  Also, it should be led by intention and action, rather than emotional reactions.

Indeed, I have had a lot of experience, as I am sure that many others can also testify in their lives, of making decisions based on emotional responses to things.  By that, I don't just mean angry reactions.  There has been times that I felt low and depressed or scared or more and withdrew into more safe environments.  It became a common defense mechanism to do so, and both after my first divorce and my eye surgeries I would choose to abandon my job and environment to seek family foundations.  I do not mean to say that seeking family is a bad thing.  However, let me more fully go through my examples.

In those examples, I upended my life and put myself in economically more difficult situations, and the result was having to work really hard and having less actual time to interact with family.  Further, the world is much smaller in our day than we think.  Driving hours away to visit family is just as difficult, oftentimes, as flying out to see them, and there are other ways to connect without having to be in person. 

But, to pause to note one additional point, I often found that the times AFTER difficult periods were filled with things that were just as or more difficult and the ultimate lesson was not finding a secure and safe alternative but he life lesson that I was always able to stand and thrive IN those other difficult situations, just fine.  The correct response was not to react with emotion but to get up, get dressed, keep working hard, and plan wisely.

This goes both ways, though.  And, you should not stay somewhere out of emotion or fear, either.  The difficulty of a path should not dictate your choice but what is most important for you to do for your heart and life.  So, as I prepare to move with the difficulties of my goals, ahead, I know that the things I have been doing and the direction I go is choices made in wisdom and conviction.  It is done with intention and well thought out steps, and it is ALREADY a much steadier and more prosperous change than those of the past.

So, this blog post would be to simply say that if you are feeling stresed and fearful and emotional, don't make decisions.  Take a breath.  Go for a walk.  Let the emotions drop, and then choose what path leads to outcomes most in line with your desired lifeline.

God is Good When Prayers Aren't Answered

I attended a Christian artist concert the other day, and there was a lot of good in it, and it gave me a lot of opportunities to pray and connect with God.  However, if there was one thing I would add ... one area where it could be improved in the message... it would be that they kept coming back to the theme of saying that God was good and trustworthy because of all the good He gives us and that we could stand on His word because it would result in getting what we desire and trust Him with.

I get it.  I understand that people might be lacking and want to believe in something good coming to them, instead of just bad.  But, I want to posit something for you to consider.  God is good, even when He does not give you what you desire.  I don't even mean, because something better is coming, instead... though it certainly can be.  I mean He is good, period. He is and has been in my life good in standing with me in trials, listening to me when I don't have answers and am stressed, and simply being loving in ways that doesn't result in a physical expression.  I've learned much in the times He didn't answer prayers about myself and grown in ways I could not have if I'd got what I desired.  God is god in and of the light and the darkness and helps us understand giving love and grace to those in both.

So, that's the message I wanted to post this morning.  When you find yourself like Paul and Silas chained up in some prison of life, worship, because as even that artist noted God's goodness doesn't depend on our circumstances.  I hope that helps someone, if only to know God is still there for you in prayers that go unanswered.

Florida My Home

I am three weeks away from moving back to an area that has always felt like home to me and where I have a long term history off and on for a lot of my life.  I wanted to go through several of those memories, and since this is my blog I can do that.

I have been noting on my social media 4 years in particular from 2020 to 2024 as that was a time when I most recently spent several years on my own healing from a past marriage and discovering so much about myself.  There has been several other ways of growth that I have done that have been very important in the year that came after.  However, those years were very pivotal in many ways, but I will get to that.  

My history in Florida actually began a LONG time before that.  In the senior year of my high school, my dad got a job in Florida, and we moved from Oklahoma to Florida to an area on the offskirts of Winter Haven.  I would attend Winter Haven High School and would graduate with a 3.5 GPA.  I was on the newspaper staff at that school, learned to love literature at that school, and was working during that time and years after at the AMC in the next town over, Lakeland.  At that job, I rose from usher to concession to usher trainer to projectionist and gained a lot of respect and memories at that job and among that crew.

During that time of working, I was also going to the local community college and was living with two roommates away from my parents.  It was a very defining period of my life to become myself more.  I tried different things in that time like being a model.  I was Mozart in the local paper in one gig that I did, powdered hair wig and all.  I bought a resident Disney pass and went to that a lot.  The next year, I attended Florida Southern College.  That was another developing experience.  There, I was on several social planning clubs, joined a fraturnity, was on the religious group, and was training to be a resident advisor.  I was also working as a youth director.  Actually, I was a youth director from high school years up to that point at a Methodist church.  I was selected to go to the general council for the church as part of that.  However, a death of a child in my group hit me hard, and I left the state for a period to live with my family and returned the next year.  There, I met my first wife, and we got married and had our first child.

Following that, most of the period after that was in other states and the miliary, until the late 20 tens, after the birth of our 2nd child.  In that time, I did a lot of raising of the youngest, while doing online schooling, first for being a teacher and when jobs froze up for that switched to accounting.  My degree under boht of those was religion and was done in the years that I was homeschooling our first child due to certain life realities.  Anyways, so I finished my accounting and would get hired out of the state and would not return until 2020, the period I spoke of at the beginning.  

In that period, I learned how to stand on my own as my kids were not in my house, and I learned a lot of things that I loved to do and ways of being that still resonate with me, today.  I did a lot of amazing things and had a lot of amazing experiences.  And, the very weather and ocean and such touched deep in my being and left a footprint that will remain, forever.

So, yes... I was there for  4 years a few years ago.  But, my soul has always been tied to it, and I have memories and pieces of myself left all over central Florida that I look forward to collecting, again, as I move forward to make new memories as the me that has grown from all of those yeaars and the recent ones.  Florida is my home, and I look forward to planting my roots there, again, soon.